


heartbreak

by youcouldmakealife



Series: but always in tandem [39]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 08:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: It’s weird to think of good nausea and bad nausea, but before it was like —I have something to lose here. This is important.He doesn’t know what this is.





	heartbreak

They’re set to play the Rangers, and it’s — Robbie knows how he’d feel, a year ago, because they did this, not the Rangers, but round two. Did it the year before too. He felt pretty much the same way each time: nervous, excited, faintly nauseated, but not like the nausea he’s been feeling lately. It’s weird to think of good nausea and bad nausea, but before it was like — _I have something to lose here. This is important._

He doesn’t know what this is.

He watches Breaking Bad on the flight out with Chaps, who hasn’t said a thing about what Robbie said to him, other than ‘I told you it’s okay’ when Robbie apologized again in person. It’s easier than sitting with Matty, who’s kind of a chore to be around right now, not that that isn’t true of everyone. David doesn’t talk at all, unless it’s to clarify something after an episode, and Robbie’s seen it, so if he zones out he’s not missing anything. It’s as easy as anything can be, right now.

They get to New York. Matty hovers around him in the room, and Robbie catches at least three sets of worried eyes on him when he ducks out of dinner early, and that isn’t easy at all. Matty comes in less than an hour after he does, and Robbie pretends to be asleep, even though there’s no way Matty will buy that. Matty lets him, though, doesn’t say anything, just turns the TV on very low, so low Robbie can’t quite catch the words from the far bed, and eventually Robbie sleeps for real.

The nausea ramps up before Game One, and Robbie hopes it’s anticipation. He hopes it’s having something to lose.

“Robbie,” Georgie says, after the warm-up and before Coach’s ‘you got this’ speech. “I’m worried about you.”

“Not my problem,” Robbie says to his knees.

“Look,” Georgie says. “I know I’m the last person you want to talk to, especially about this, but —”

“Good guess,” Robbie interrupts, and stands, walks across the room to hover by Matty’s stall, because he knows Georgie won’t follow him, and it’s worth it, even if the look Matty gives him, worried and wary, is something he got sick of awhile ago, something that’s started to feel accusing, even though he knows Matty doesn’t mean it to, like, ‘can you get your shit together so I can stop worrying about you?’ Robbie wishes he could. Almost as much, he wishes Matty could stop worrying, wishes it’d just — 

He cuts the thought off before it’s fully realized, and doesn’t say a word to Georgie but holds out his fist for the heartbreak fistbump before they get on the ice, because it’s taken them this far.

They lose. 

They lose again, the next game.

Robbie thinks he should feel worse about it. Robbie’s pretty fucking sure he should.

*

Robbie doesn’t know if a series has ever felt longer. There’s this knowledge gnawing at him that the season’s technically over, overdue, that it could end for them any day now, and obviously he doesn’t want that, he wants to go to the very end. That’s what he’s wanted since he was a little kid. That’s the dream.

He doesn’t think he can take another month of this. He’s holding on, fingernails sunk in, but everything keeps shifting on him, even though it’s all familiar: same plane, same generic hotel rooms, restaurants he’s been before, the rush of New York around him enough to grit his teeth at. He knows all this. It never used to be too much. He used to enjoy it. 

Playoffs weren’t enjoyable, even when he wasn’t whatever the fuck he is, were too nerve-wracking. You worry about the next game until it makes you feel sick, you try not to do the same about the last game because that’s not something you can fix. You sit on the edge of your seat for weeks at a time, more and more battered after every game. Playoffs aren’t enjoyable, but they’re exciting. Heart in your throat, going to be sick exciting, but amazing at the same time, like maybe why sky divers think it’s a great fucking idea to tempt God by jumping out of a plane.

Robbie doesn’t miss the edge of your seat nerves, but he should. He definitely misses the adrenaline. It comes to him when he steps onto the ice, these beautiful stretches of time when he can focus all his attention on one thing, maybe not exactly as well as he’s used to but better than he can with anything else in his life, those times where everything is the game, and he still cares, he still knows how to care.

It’s the second they’re off the ice it just…vanishes. Getting their balls busted by their coach, getting asked the hard questions by the media, and Robbie — it’s just nothing.

They win Game Three.

Robbie’s been trying to do what Quincy said, keep from making other people unhappy, which mostly means not going out. That’s pretty easy right now — even sharing with Matty on the road is getting on his last nerve, so he doubts he’d particularly enjoy going out, where everyone’s louder and more annoying than Matty. In New York it was leaving dinner as soon as he fed himself, tonight it’s ducking out as he’s dressed. 

It’s not like anyone notices. They win Game Three, but no one’s going out to celebrate, not in the midst of it, already looking ahead to Game Four, where they either tie it up or sit on the brink. Maybe breathing a sigh of relief to their wife or girlfriend, ‘no matter what, it won’t be a sweep’. They made the Conference Finals last year. They need three wins in the next four games just to match it.

Robbie wants to go home. Not the place he is, an apartment he usually likes but that feels empty right now, too bare, the rooms — Robbie’s not going to say haunted, that’s fucking stupid, but — the living room Georgie ended things. The bedroom he took Robbie apart. Robbie wonders if he forgot to put him back together.

_This is pathetic_ , Robbie tells himself, but he doesn’t know how to stop.

*

They lose Game Four, and it’s almost a relief.

*

They’re back in New York for Game Five. Same hotel, a room two floors above the one they had but identical down to the art on the walls, blank and generic, the kind that can’t offend anyone but isn’t exactly going to inspire them either. Not that Robbie knows much about art, but three blobs are three blobs.

“What’re you looking at?” Matty asks.

“Blobs,” Robbie says.

Matty tilts his head, like he’s trying to find meaning in them.

“They’re very — blue,” he says finally.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Robbie says, and the smile Matty shoots him, small and relieved, just makes him feel guilty, like he’s pretending. Pretending what, he doesn’t know. They’re blue. Three blue blobs against an off-white background. Art, apparently.

Everyone’s all nerves before the game, because of course they are. Do or die. Do or die after that. Do or die after _that_ if they manage to get through the first two. Odds are stacked against them, and no one’s saying it, but they all know it.

Robbie imagines in the Rangers room they’re talking about how to take them out. Don’t think it’s easy. They’re playing for their lives, here. 

Robbie tries to summon up the urgency. He tries really, really hard. He thinks he manages it, at least almost. Do or die.

Georgie stands shoulder to shoulder with him in the cramped visitor’s hallway before the game, looks over, waiting. Robbie wonders what it means that this is the only thing that’s a given right now. 

“Heartbreak fistbump,” Robbie says, unthinking, then wants to bash his fucking face in. It always seems like he’s completely numb right until the worst shit creeps in, and he’s suddenly aware, oh, joy’s off the table, but here’s your loyal friend mortification, he still works. He’s better than ever, actually.

Georgie’s still, still enough there’s zero hope he didn’t hear that, understand it, doesn’t know exactly what Robbie meant and who it’s referring to. “Heartbreak fistbump,” he says, and holds out his fist, and Robbie doesn’t really have any choice other than to knock his own against it.

“Go team,” Robbie says weakly after he makes it explode.

“Go team,” Georgie repeats, and then there’s no room for heartbreak, or mortification, or anything, because they have to play for their fucking lives.

*

They do their best. They take it to OT.

No one’s ever said that about winners, have they.

The winning goal — the winning goal’s off Robbie’s stick. Robbie’s trying to shove Wagner out of Crane’s eye line, his ass just out of the blue paint, enough to be really fucking annoying but not enough for goalie interference. He’s got his eye on Wagner, and he doesn’t have an eye on Irwin. He doesn’t think Irwin was aiming for him, was aiming for Crane’s five hole, and Crane’s got that covered, Crane’s always got that covered. He would have had it without batting an eye. 

It goes off Robbie’s stick, and it changes direction, and it goes in, and before he’s even blinked the Rangers are jumping off the bench and onto the ice.

Robbie shuts his eyes.

“Hey,” he hears, stick against his calves. “It wasn’t on you.”

“You would’ve had it,” Robbie responds, the numbness all — it feels like it’s spreading everywhere and receding, all at once. Robbie shakes a lot of hands, says ‘good game’ so many times it loses meaning, not enough times to make it true. They get off the ice, and Robbie can feel the back pats, hear the murmurs, basically the same as what Crane said, just as hollow. 

He sits down, and suddenly he’s feeling a lot, like everything that was washed out in the past few weeks has returned in technicolor, just in time for everything to fucking _hurt_.

Robbie’s pulling off his jersey when he starts to cry. The tears surprise him, coming fast and unbidden, not those pretty, silent things they show in movies, the photogenic single tear slipping down someone’s cheek, but ugly sobs that wrack his chest, set every single bruise he’s sustained and forgotten right back into throbbing. He can hear the media filing in, and he’s sitting there with his jersey half on, sobbing into it, and if this isn’t the lowest moment of his life, well. It isn’t. But it’s up there.

He can’t hide in his jersey, as much as he wants to, so he tugs it back down, reaching for a towel to hide his face.

Robbie feels an arm wrap around his shoulder. It could be anyone, but he knows it’s Georgie. 

“Hey,” Georgie says softly, and then, “Robbie,” when Robbie turns his face into his shoulder, smelling sticky sweat.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Georgie says, and Robbie wants to bristle, ask him why the fuck he assumes Robbie’s thinking that in the first place, but it _was_ his fault, no matter what Georgie says. Game-winning — _series_ winning goal tipped right off his stick into Crane’s net. He’d make a better Ranger than Capital.

“How many goals have you tipped this season?” Georgie asks.

In his anger Robbie forgets to keep his face hidden from the eyes of the room, the media, head shooting up. “Is that supposed to _help_?” he snaps.

“It’s a hazard of the job, Robbie,” Georgie says. “How many goals have you saved? I guarantee it’s a fuckton more, and I can’t even count on one hand how many times you did it this _series_. You think this is your fault? If you hadn’t been there we might have gotten swept. You kept us _in_ this.”

Robbie swipes over his cheeks.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Robbie says. This isn’t the first heartbreaking loss he’s faced, he can’t even count them on two hands, but he’s never cried before, and now he can’t fucking stop. It’s hard to get a word out, every breath hitching, uneven, and he wants to stop so badly, and he doesn’t know how to.

“Fuck, c’mere,” Georgie says, pulling him right back in to his sweaty shoulder, and Robbie wants to hold on until Georgie pries him off, tells him again he can’t, they _can’t_ , wants to hide there until everyone’s gone, so he can pretend no one’s seen this, Robbie breaking down like a little bitch when everyone else managed to hold their shit together.

“Don’t let anyone see me like this,” Robbie sobs, and Georgie’s hand comes up to cup the back of his skull.

“No one’s going to think any less of you,” Georgie says. “Okay?”

“Please,” Robbie manages.

“I won’t,” Georgie says. “Okay? I won’t.”

Robbie cries himself out, mostly. No one approaches them, at least none he can hear over the noise of the room, muffled against Georgie’s shoulder pad. He wants to stay here, and that’s exactly why he needs to get his shit together enough to leave. 

“I got him,” Georgie says to someone. Matty, probably, or Cap Q. Then to Robbie, “I got you.”

There are so many things Robbie could say to that, most of them cruel. There are so many —

“Thanks,” he says instead.


End file.
